Summary

  • The proposal uses village-level green, yellow and red zones to assign construction roles and technical relief. A place on the map is not proof of funding, a carrier commitment or a working connection.
  • In red zones, state provision has no automatic sunset. A carrier must offer equal or better service conditions. A separate rule requires it to use existing public infrastructure and bear operating costs, without establishing an ownership transfer.

What has to survive the handover

A new tower is something an official can point to. A connection that works as reliably after a change of provider is harder to show. Indonesia's draft mobile-broadband plan makes that second task a condition of ending public provision in its red zones.

The replacement infrastructure must offer the same or broader coverage, the same or better availability, and the same or better quality. Article 8 gives no date on which the state network automatically becomes unnecessary. The word “temporary” describes its intended role; it does not excuse a worse service for the people who depend on it.

These are proposed conditions, not a completed handover. The document examined still has placeholders for its regulation number and promulgation date. Komdigi, responsible for communications and digital affairs, sought comments from 22 September to 5 October 2026. Its directorate's notice is dated 23 September. Closing a consultation is not the same as bringing a regulation into force.

The bill does not disappear with the old provider

Article 9 deals with the equipment left in place. When a carrier provides infrastructure in a village or urban administrative unit where the ministry has already provided it, the carrier must use that public infrastructure and pay its operating costs. The obligation concerns use and operating costs, not, by itself, a sale or transfer of ownership.

The rule sits within a three-colour map of desa, villages, and kelurahan, urban administrative units. Green means commercially viable: mobile operators build. Yellow also leaves operators in charge, with technical help. Red means insufficient commercial viability and joint planning between operators and the ministry. They can serve different parts of the same locality rather than duplicating one another's entire footprint.

The yellow-zone help includes exceptions to minimum spacing between microwave-link radio stations and use of radio local area network, or RLAN, spectrum outside ordinary technical operating conditions. Corresponding relief applies in red. The ministry may also build temporarily in yellow when there is local demand and agreement with an operator through joint planning, until the operator's infrastructure is available. That has its own wording; the three explicit service comparisons belong to the red-zone provision.

For a community, those colours would help determine whom it looks to for construction. They do not establish that a named village lacks service today, has received a budget or has a contractor on the way.

A long list is not an explanation

The draft considers population, households, electricity users, road access, business, tourism, education and health. It also looks at fibre providers, microwave links, the distribution and density of mobile sites, and signal coverage by population, land area and settlements. Both potential demand and the network already present matter.

But Article 5 does not publish the weights or scoring formula. The file's 983 pages include the regulation and extensive lists of localities. A resident can find a classification without being able to reproduce the decision behind it. More detailed working data may exist; the list of factors does not disclose that method.

Even the word “covered” needs its denominator. Under Article 15, a locality qualifies when at least 80% of its land area or population has a signal no weaker than -105 dBm, aggregating coverage across the spectrum used. Both tests need not pass. A successful area test would not establish the same share of people reached; a population test could leave remote land outside the footprint. These are possibilities allowed by the measure, not observed failures in a particular village.

The proposed speeds are averages for users: at least 18 Mbps in yellow and 3 Mbps in red. Green follows the minister's strategic plan, with the calculation procedure left to the Director-General. They are not guaranteed minimums for every phone at every hour. Signal strength and averages also say little by themselves about price, indoor reception, busy-hour capacity, access to devices or actual use.

The national aim of reaching 98% of the population by 2029 is a different measure, and still a target rather than a result. The 2025 announcement of cooperation with Swedfund on a feasibility study does not show that any village in this draft has a completed network.

The village can change before the map does

An administrative split or move would not automatically change a locality's zone. Conflicting location references defer to the Directorate-General's map. An update can occur no earlier than a year after newer village-potential data is published. That is not a promise of annual revision: the existing treatment lasts until a new plan is issued, including for places thought to need adjustment. A new road, school or private network does not recolour the map on arrival.

Lu Heng's Note 64 supplies a comparison about shared rules and later choices, not Indonesian law. The practical questions here are whether a locality can understand its classification, correct old information and verify its replacement service. A temporary public network needs a way out. Its users need a way to stay connected.